Introducing Your Kid to Club Volleyball: What Parents Need to Know Before They Try Out
The coffee cup in my hand was leaking through the paper sleeve onto my wrist, and I was starting to regret agreeing to this. It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday, the entryway of the community gym smelled like old sneakers and floor wax, and my 12-year-old Lila was twisting the strap of her too-big new knee pads, saying she’d changed her mind. She’d liked rec volleyball well enough, but the idea of “club” tryouts sounded scary—like everyone else would already know how to spike perfectly, and she’d be the kid standing in the wrong spot the whole time. I told her we could leave after 10 minutes if she hated it, no arguments, and she finally dragged her feet through the gym doors.
I ended up there because Lila had quit rec soccer the year before, saying the coach only paid attention to the fastest kids, and she spent most games on the bench picking dandelions. She’s always been the kind of kid who’d rather draw in her room than join a new group, so I’d stopped pushing organized sports for a while. But a mom I sat next to at a school book fair mentioned her daughter was on a low-commitment club volleyball team for 11-12 year olds, not the crazy kind that travels across the state every other weekend and costs a small fortune. This one practiced twice a week, had one tournament a month within an hour’s drive, and was meant for kids who just wanted to play, not earn a college scholarship. That sounded doable, so I signed Lila up for the open tryout on a whim.
I sat on the cold metal bleachers with a handful of other parents, and listened to them chat. One dad said his older son did the elite club route, quit after two years because he burned out, so his younger son was here for the developmental team. The coach, a 22-year-old who played at the local community college, didn’t make anyone do fancy drills right off the bat. She split the kids into small groups, had them practice rolling the ball to each other first, and corrected form gently instead of yelling when someone messed up. After an hour, Lila came over to me, sweaty, and said “that wasn’t bad. Can I stay?”
I learned pretty quickly that most of the stereotypes about club volleyball aren’t true for smaller local programs. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on gear or fees—our season fees cover court time and tournament entry, and we only had to buy knee pads and a pair of court shoes, which she can wear for gym class at school. Carpooling with other parents cuts down on the number of Saturdays I have to spend all day at a gym, and the coach is fine with kids missing a practice for a birthday party or a family trip, no questions asked.
A month in, we had our first small local tournament. Lila messed up a pass early on, sent the ball flying into the bleachers, and I braced for her to blush and shrink back, like she does when she gets something wrong at school. Instead, her teammate yelled from across the net “my bad, I shifted too far left!” and Lila yelled back “no, I should’ve moved faster, next one!” That’s when I realized what this was giving her that her art table at home couldn’t. Lila has always hated being wrong, so much that she won’t raise her hand in class even when she knows the answer, just in case she’s mistaken. On the volleyball court, everyone messes up every single game, and no one cares that much—you just adjust and go to the next play.
A lot of parents I know say they won’t let their kid try club volleyball because they think it’s only for super athletic kids or families with tons of extra money. That’s just not true if you know where to look, and I’ve picked up a few small, concrete things that made the whole process easier for us. First, start small. Skip the big elite clubs that advertise on regional sports networks, and ask your kid’s rec league coach or other parents at school for recommendations for local developmental clubs. Email the coach before tryouts and ask them point blank what the commitment level is, how much it costs, and how much playing time each kid gets—good coaches will tell you straight that developmental teams give every kid equal playing time, no matter how good they are. Second, give your kid an out upfront. I told Lila before the first practice that if she hated it after a month, we could quit and I wouldn’t guilt her about wasting the money or the time. That took all the pressure off, and she was way more willing to try hard without worrying about letting me down. Third, talk about messing up before they start. I said to Lila, “No one here expects you to be good at this right now. Every single person on the court will miss at least five serves today. That’s just how it goes.” That’s way more useful than just saying “have fun,” which doesn’t mean anything to a kid who’s already scared.
Lila didn’t make the top developmental team this year. She’s on the second tier, and she gets way more playing time than she would if she’d moved up, which she says she likes. Some weeks she comes home complaining that practice is too early and it cuts into her after-school drawing time, and some weeks she rambles for 20 minutes in the car about how they beat the team from the next town over. This season ends in a month, and she hasn’t said yet if she wants to play again next season, and I’m not going to ask until she brings it up.
It’s not about turning her into a college athlete. It’s just about giving her a place to mess up, talk to other kids, and get used to picking up and moving on when something goes wrong. Last week, her group project diorama fell apart the night before it was due, and instead of coming to me crying to fix it, she texted her group members, picked up extra cardboard from the grocery store on her way to school, and rearranged it with them before class. That’s the stuff that sticks, way more than any trophy she could bring home.
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